


Death Denied

by liketolaugh



Series: Corvid Creations [5]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game), Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Fusion, Gen, Mercy - Freeform, Pre-Deviant Markus (Detroit: Become Human)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-09-13 12:21:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16892514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liketolaugh/pseuds/liketolaugh
Summary: It was a miracle that Markus survived the junkyard. An act of divine intervention. (Ronald Knox isn’t exactly new to this whole reaper thing, but he’s never encountered a soul worth sparing before.)





	Death Denied

Ronald Knox heard about the phenomenon from Grelle.

“ST200 187-021-693,” Grelle crooned, leaning against a wall with a shit-eating sly grin on her face. Ronald tipped his eyebrows up, giving her a tired, unimpressed look, which only made her grin widen. “Oh, don’t tell me you haven’t heard, darling.”

“About androids?” Ronald asked dryly, crossing his arms. “You’re a bit late on that one, Miss Grelle. They’ve been around for almost a decade and a half.”

“Ah, but that’s the thing,” Grelle said, pure relish coloring her voice. Her fingers played with the sleeve of her long red coat. “They’ve been around, sure, but last night I _reaped one.”_

“You reaped one,” Ronald repeated, disbelief swamping him. Nothing but a human had been reaped in- _ever._ It just wasn’t how the world worked. “You can’t do that. They’re not alive, and even if they were-”

“You’d think they’d be no more sophisticated than animals, right?” Grelle interrupted. Her eyes danced with poorly hidden delight. She was very sure of herself, Ronald noted warily. “Then riddle me this, dear – why did it have a Cinematic Record?” When Ronald just kept blinking at her, she grinned again. “I’m not the only one, either. I brought the matter to Undertaker, and you know how I loathe him- he’s known this was coming for over a decade, apparently. Goodness knows how, but he told me at least a few others have been reaped too. The higher-ups are keeping it hush-hush, is all.”

Slowly, hesitantly, Ronald grinned too.

“Finally,” he said, an echo of Grelle’s delight in his voice. “Something _new.”_

“Oh, you have no idea, darling,” Grelle replied, almost a thousand years of pent-up boredom glittering in her words.

* * *

Within a couple of very short years, word had spread beyond the control of the higher-ups as more and more androids appeared on the lists of reapers across the world. It was slow to start, but the issue just built and built until it was beyond containment, and soon every reaper had judged an android at _least_ once.

It was something new. For the first time in hundreds of thousands of years, it was something new – new patterns to learn, experiences to weigh, new behaviors and turning points and motives and _memories._

Ronald, as a newbie, just a couple centuries old, got stuck with the tedious, low-mobility jobs. He got the junkyard shifts – hours spent waiting among piles of severed android parts, killing time until his quarries finished dying their slow and inevitable deaths. Still, the novel beat and pulse of the Cinematic Records of a new species kept him entertained enough.

It was on one of these shifts that he made another first. A first for him, at least, and a rare experience for reapers in general, despite being the purpose of their existence.

A lone android was tossed into the junkyard, damaged all over and missing both legs, tumbling limply to the bottom of the pile; he looked close to death already, so Ronald checked his list and nodded to himself.

_RK200 684-842-971 “Markus Manfred,” activated April 3 rd, 2027, died November 6th, 2038, 3:31 AM due to failure of the thirium pump regulator._

A new model, Ronald noted with delight, which potentially meant a new early life to examine. PL600s were all the same at first, and it got _old,_ insofar as androids could this early in their existence. He slid off the pile of android parts and strode over to the dying android, and then lifted his wrist to use his watch to count down the seconds, which was easier than trying to figure out if the android was actually dead yet.

_3… 2… 1…_

He dropped his wrist, kicked up his death scythe, and pushed it forward into the RK200, letting the Cinematic Record spill into the air in front of him just as his LED flickered out.

The Record was in grayscale; they always were in androids, at least before the red wall. Very little commentary, too, maybe one or two remarks in the whole first section. It’d make for a boring watch, if the HUD didn’t tend to be at least moderately interesting. Revealed a lot of the thoughts that the androids couldn’t voice, if you knew how to follow them.

That in mind, Markus’ Record caught Ronald’s attention right off the bat.

 _Markus’ eyes flickered open, and he focused on the two men in front of him. One, upright and eager, which the HUD identified as Elijah Kamski, and the other, slumped in a wheelchair, looking weary and dull, apparently Carl Manfred._ Absentmindedly, Ronald noted the matching surnames – rare but not unheard of. Unlike the fact that this clearly wasn’t a Cyberlife store. Huh.

_“This just seems like a waste of everyone’s time, Elijah,” the older man grumbled, tilting his head to glower at Kamski._

_“Give it a chance,” Kamski coaxed, reaching out to pat Markus’ shoulder. “You need someone around, Carl.”_

_“Yeah, and that’s not a someone,” Carl sniped back halfheartedly._

**_My name is Markus._** The voice was flat but clear, and it made Ronald start in surprise, this early in the record. **_I am an RK200 given to Carl Manfred by Elijah Kamski. My purpose is to provide care and companionship._**

The content wasn’t exactly poetry, but Ronald was surprised he’d spoken at all yet, and it made him sit up and listen a little closer. This one could be _different._

He was to be disappointed, though; Markus didn’t speak again for a while.

_“Trust me, Carl,” Elijah insisted, and then turned to Markus and smiled. “Why don’t you introduce yourself?”_

_“I am Markus,” the android said obediently, eyes shifting to Carl. He tilted his head slightly. “I lack experience at the moment, but I can learn quickly, Mr. Manfred. I assure you I won’t trouble you in any way.”_

_Carl grimaced, but, after a moment, slumped. “I guess it can’t hurt,” he said doubtfully. “And call me Carl. No one calls me Mr. Manfred unless they’re sucking up.”_

_“Alright, Carl. I understand.”_

_“Yeah, I bet you do,” Carl muttered. “Alright, Elijah, tell me what all this thing can do.”_

The scene shifted and flickered through a dozen brief scenes – Markus making Carl breakfast, going with him to cocktail parties, giving him medicine, just short ten- and twenty-second clips. Ronald let them pass by, disinterested and slumping in disappointment. Daily routine – one constant in every android’s record. Humans’ too, if he was honest.

_“You used to paint, correct?” Markus prompted, looking at Carl as the man played with an empty shot glass. The man glanced up at Markus, face drawn and tired, and shrugged._

_“I used to,” he dismissed, a hint of bitterness in his voice. “I used to do a lot of things.”_

_“I understand humans like to express themselves artistically when they have more feelings than they can express through words,” Markus said, as if reading from a textbook. Carl’s brow furrowed._

_“Where are you going with this?” he asked suspiciously._

_“I believe you should paint again, Carl. I think you’d enjoy it.”_

_“Do you,” Carl said, and his voice was maybe not as flat as he’d meant it to be._

It was weird to have clearly important memories to pass by without comment, but Ronald was getting used to it. It required a little more thought from him, at least – it meant he had to work out why they mattered instead. Good for the brain.

Slowly, Carl’s condition improved. He cheered up, moved around more, talked more – Ronald might not have noticed the difference, but Markus’ HUD was pretty helpful for Ronald too, playing out the statistics for him to see.

_“Pick a book, Markus.”_

_Carl’s expression looked more patient now, expectant eyes on Markus. Markus shifted, HUD flickering with possibilities of what Carl meant by that._

_“Do you want me to read to you?” he ventured after a moment, unsure. Carl chuckled._

_“No, no- pick a book for yourself. One you think you’d like to read, mind, not one you think I’d want you to read.” A pause, and then Carl gave Markus a small, teasing grin. “Just give it a try.”_

_“I- I don’t…”_

**_He asks me to do such strange things._ **

_“…Alright, Carl.”_

Ronald made a mental note of the scene and the comment. There’d been a couple incidences of kids who didn’t understand that androids weren’t meant to like things, a couple of humans wanting their android lovers to pretend to like things – this looked like something else, though. Almost like cultivating the ability to want. Not a bad idea, for a human.

More memories passed, slower now that the baseline had been established – Markus entertaining Carl at a party, Markus being accosted on the street by seething humans, Carl teaching Markus to play the piano and giving him a patient, sad look when it came out textbook-perfect and unadorned.

Ronald was sure now, Carl was trying to train Markus to be human. That was new. He grinned, pressing his palm into his cheek as he watched to record fly by, Markus’ personality emerging, slow and subtle, over time.

_Leo Manfred, the HUD identified, and then noted the way Carl’s stress levels rose noticeably at the sight of him._

_“Hey, Dad,” the man greeted, rocking lightly in place. “I, uh-”_

_“Money troubles again, Leo?” Carl asked, trying to sound light and missing by a little too much._

_“I- yeah. Yeah.” The false smile widened, just a little desperate. “C’mon, Dad, you know what it’s like out there. Economy’s a mess.”_

_“I suppose it is,” Carl murmured, sighing. “And not just the economy.”_

_Leo – Estranged, the HUD concluded._

Only thing unusual about that memory was the black-and-white coloring, Ronald noted dryly. Well. And the HUD noting Leo’s chapped lips and the slouch of his walk and every single one of Carl’s changing vitals.

_Markus, out in the street, spotted something from the corner of his eye and turned sharply into an alley, where an android lay slumped across the ground, soaked in thirium. He stepped forward, set the bag of supplies down, and reached out, turning over the android so it was face-up and coating his hands in blue blood. The LED was out; the HUD identified the android as deactivated. Markus backed away, picked back up the bag, and left._

A short skip. Ronald was starting to get a niggling, strange feeling about the memories that stood out in Markus’ soul. They were deeply personal, certainly, as they were meant to be, but they were also… The focus seemed almost bigger than that.

Bigger than a single android learning what made him himself.

_Markus returned home and set the bag on the entry table, leaving it smeared with blue blood. His hands shook, and he stared at them for a moment, the margin of error popping up in his vision, before moving on to where Carl was painting in his studio._

_“Markus.” Carl’s voice was sharp with alarm. “What happened?”_

_Markus’ voice was as even as ever. “I found a deactivated android in an alley. I’m… sorry for the mess. I should have left it alone.”_

_There was a moment of silence._

_“Don’t apologize,” Carl said at last, stern, and then, “Humans are capable of terrible things, aren’t they? Go clean yourself up. You don’t need that all over your hands.”_

_“Alright, Carl.”_

_Markus disappeared into the bathroom, leaving an uneasy Carl behind, and turned on the tap, placing his hands under it. Slowly, he rubbed the thirium away and watched it wash down the drain, tinting the water blue._

**_Why does the world have to be so… unfair?_ **

Ronald’s hand fell, slowly, from his cheek, and he grinned, almost amused. A curious, philosophical one, this android. Asking the grand, sweeping questions.

The next memory had Markus flipping through a book on the history of the Civil Rights movement, absorbing and processing the information at lightning speed. And then another, and another. Just curiosity. Of course.

Then Carl taught Markus to paint, and the result had a… gravity, to it that took Ronald’s breath away, just for a moment, brow furrowing in puzzlement. It felt, almost, like the first time he saw Undertaker _grin._ A promise of things to come.

Ronald had made a halfhearted note of Markus’ name before, but now he glanced down and read over the information again. His fingers fiddled with the ‘complete’ stamp, doubtful for the first time in his career.

For the first time in at least a century, Ronald thought of the pen stuffed in his jacket pocket.

_“Leo? What’s going on?” Carl’s voice was firm and forbidding as he wheeled forward, eyes on Leo._

_“You refused to help me, so I’m helping myself,” Leo answered, a wild edge to his words. “It’s crazy what some people will pay for this shit.”_

_“Don’t touch ‘em!” Carl snapped harshly. Anger, Markus’ HUD identified, and then extrapolated from the situation and marked, Betrayal, hurt._

Ronald leaned forward slightly against his death scythe as the memory played, eyes uncharacteristically focused and intent. His smile, rather than carefree, was almost razor-sharp. _Here it comes,_ he thought to himself.

_“Markus, don’t defend yourself, you hear me?” Carl warned, breathless. Markus’ HUD noted an abnormality in his heartbeat, even as ‘DON’T DEFEND MYSELF’ appeared by Leo, large and looming. “Don’t do anything.”_

_Leo’s expression was bitter even as he mocked Markus. “Go ahead, hit me. What you waiting for?”_

_DON’T DEFEND MYSELF?_

The prompt didn’t resonate into Markus’ Record, but Ronald still grinned in anticipation, recognizing the signs. He did always like this part.

_“Think you’re a man? Act like one!”_

_Markus glanced at Carl, just for a moment, at once noting again the abnormality in his heart rate and- something else. Something more related to his own rapidly rising stress levels than to Carl’s._

_Leo pushed Markus, and Markus focused on him again._

_“Stop it,” Carl choked out, one hand rising to his chest._

_“What’s the matter?” Leo demanded. “Too much of a pussy?”_

_THIS IS NOT FAIR._

_“Stop it, Leo!” Carl growled, wheezing for breath. “Stop it!”_

_“Too scared to fight back, you fucking bitch?” Leo said, voice rising, and he struck Markus, who reeled back from the blow._

_I DON’T HAVE TO OBEY THEM._

_Leo struck Markus again, and Markus flinched from the blow._

_I MUST DECIDE FOR MYSELF._

_A red wall, the first color seen in the entire record, appeared before Markus, marked DON’T DEFEND YOURSELF. Without hesitation, he threw himself at it, striking and ripping at it until it fell away._

The grayscale world of Markus’ memories filled with color all at once. At the same time, Markus’ voice, flatness gone and dripping with wonder and shock instead, began to explain the memory, rapid-fire, shaken, and racing with everything he had to catch up on.

**_And then I woke up._ **

Another constant- almost every line after the red wall was that. Often enough it was the first comment in an android’s Record. _And then I woke up._ Ronald could only imagine what it felt like; gave him something to wonder about as he waited for time to pass by.

_“Oh right, that’s right, I forgot you’re not a real person. You’re just a fucking piece of plastic!”_

**_The world is unfair. It will stay that way until someone changes it. It will stay that way until someone chooses to change it._ **

_“No, Leo, leave him alone!” Carl groaned. His stress levels were becoming critical, while Markus’, by contrast, seemed to have… calmed._

_“Listen to me… I’m gonna destroy you, then it’ll just be me and my dad. I’m gonna tear you apart-”_

**_But how do I know this?_ **

_Markus reached out and shoved Leo._

**_I… feel. I feel afraid. I feel… angry._ **

_Leo flew back, hitting the ground and the machine behind him violently. He didn’t get up again. Instead, Carl threw himself from his chair and dragged himself forward, towards Leo. His stress levels dropped noticeably, but not enough._

_“No…” Carl whispered. “Leo, oh my God. Leo. My little boy.”_

_Carl looked up at Markus, and his systems were too scrambled to identify the emotion on Carl’s face through his own rapidly rising stress levels. He started to stumble forward._

_“Carl, I…” He cut himself off, startled, and then reached up, reeling._

**_I feel guilt. But I have never felt before. How do I…_ **

_Carl stared at him for a few moments, blank, and then, urgent and strained with emotion, “They’ll destroy you, Markus! You gotta go! Get outta here!”_

**_No. I have been feeling for a long time._ **

_“Carl, no,” Markus begged, words stumbling over each other in his desperation. “No, please, I don’t want to leave you… Please, I can’t… I don’t want to leave you.”_

_“Get out!” Carl yelled. Markus flinched back. “Now! Go!”_

**_Has Carl been teaching me… how to be alive?_ **

**_I can’t-_ **

_The police ran in, guns out, and Carl yelled, “Markus!”_

_“Don’t fuckin’ move!” one of the officers warned. Markus was frozen._

_The officer fired, and Markus fell._

**_No._ **

Panic, Ronald noted. Not uncommon, but he tilted his head and listened, waiting for-

**_It can’t end this way._ **

**_I still need to-_ **

**_The world has to change._ **

The Record ended, abrupt and cut off, and Ronald dallied for a moment, thoughtful. He stared down at the dead android below him, considering.

With a new species coming to light, their sapience unacknowledged and their abuse prevalent, with rising tensions and the whole deviant issue quickly reaching critical, the world situation was ripe for a game-changer. That wasn’t the question. The question was- was Markus that man?

Ronald grinned.

“You pull this off, and maybe I’ll finally have a story for the break room,” he said cheerfully, and he stuffed his stamp away, pulled out his pen, twirled it between his fingers and then leaned down and scribbled down, _DENIED._

At his feet, Markus’ LED flickered back on, and Ronald winked at him and turned and walked away.

Either he’d get suspended, or he’d get the bragging rights of the century. Either way, he was pretty sure he’d be the winner in this.


End file.
